I have studied **** Germany
Someone stood and preached to me
All the ‘important’ names
All the ‘important’ dates
I wrote them down like longshore secrets
And debated over them
Like they were the pencil sharpenings
With which I littered the floor
‘Excellent analysis’ she said
I have even stood by the gas chambers
And the gallows
At Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
And written insensitive poetry about insensitivity
But have I heard of Hans Litten?
Of course I haven’t.
I have stood in the Berlin gestapo office
And formed philosophies that feel more like profanities
Wondering how it can ever be appropriate
To take a school trip to a genocide
But tonight my ‘important’ education
Feels like the greatest atrocity
My guilty ignorance beats almost unbearably
Around my rib-cage
And waits for the shatter and the shards
Because I have never heard of Hans Litten
We all know six million
But who knows the six million?
We remember names that we stored away
Because mentioning them in an essay
Might bring about a higher grade
Displaying ‘a highly developed and complex level of understanding’
We remember names like we remember shopping lists
Or science lessons;
A few particular points
No attachment necessary
In fact, clinical detachment is far more becoming
When it comes to essay questions
They never told us about Hans Litten
Or about the men who also ran in the race to be in history books
Or about their mothers
And their fathers
And the people they shared cells with
And the people they shared graves with
My God, they never told us about Hans Litten
And Hans Litten is better known
Than most of those phantom dead
Those cracked-open voices that dared to raise
Until they were too loud for anything but the conveyer-belt
Concentration Camp system.
And the thing is that six million is not such a big number anymore
Because there are 49,506,514 views of Simon Cowell crying
And nearly 300 million of One Direction singing a song which is not so beautiful after all
And people are so desensitized to the number six million
That they believe that the world
Would not have enough **** in it
Without them posting hatred after obscenity after hatred in the YouTube comments
And Hans Litten, I can’t help feeling that I’ve failed you
My generation could tell you the private lives of their idols
But would not know your name
And we will still pour into school on Monday morning
And chorus our tireless fatigue and our lack of motivation for life
And I will still pour into school on Monday morning
And let myself complain and moan and grapple for sympathy.
I’ve acquired this abstracted self-loathing recently
That is less a hatred of myself than a hatred of what I have made of myself
Of my ingratitude and self-centred inability
To compose poems that do not start and end with Me
And of my procrastination and my ceaseless desire
To live something other than the life I’ve been given
Like I asked for extra cheese and got given Margharita
****.
I’m insufferable.
Hans Litten your list of injuries was ten times longer
than the list of all the wrongs I’ve had done against me.

Mother, I write this to you after the end of the war.
Japan surrendered and now I wear a cast.
The skies are still grey.
No bombs being dropped
The government has told us to wait
I think they might have forgotten that we fought.
Now I see silence at the ship's mast.
life has been going way too fast.
I have very little hearing left
But I still miss the times when you used to scream at me.
Sometimes,I gamble
and yes mother, I still mumble.
I often feel cheated
but in front of the strippers
I am defeated
I have been trying to heal my wounds
I hope I find real love soon
Mama, is this all too much to ask?
All I need is a little love
To forget my past.
I have fought on many fronts.
I have seen soil mixed with blood.
I have seen flowers wilt.
Seen myself hanging from a hinge.

I have aged
not gracefully
I think I have children
who think of me as futility.
I have made mistakes
and decisions in vain
got their fruit
been in pain

I need somebody to love
a place to call home.
In my soul, I have less life and more holes.
I want someone to be there when days are dreadful.
Someone who is internally beautiful.
I sound like just another lonely man
It's been hard writing this letter without slang.
Mama, is this all too much to ask?
All I want is a little love to forget my past.

Mother,  I am in my death bed
yes you read that right.
A nice nurse has been helping me write.
I ran away, Mama.
Yes I did.
Your darling son
who never flinched.
I tried to find an escape, Mama.
but failed
Went on a search for God and Allah
but lost myself half way.
They say I am too weak
Displaced bones
and days to live three.
No sign of hope.
My eyes are sensitive
the stars burn them
the sun turns them to ashes
Doctor says my eyeball has been flattened.

Mama? Are you still alive?
your son just came back from a fight.

Dead of night just as rehearsed
so many times o'er England's green fields
D Company, show no fear
A band of brothers flying high
Families waiting, home fires burning
Hoping to see their brave men once more

Gliders silent, Deadstick begins
Pegasus and the Sword await their fates
Take bridge and beach at any cost
Enemy waiting, will not go gently
They must be ours
Must be taken

Battle hard, blood is spilt
Both sides lose good friends, brothers
Success is ours but at a price
But we all know freedom is
The most precious thing we have

Pegasus Bridge, Sword Beach,
just 2 of many places
etched on our memories today
It all began here, liberation
70 years ago this very night
Brave young men
Strong and true

We give our thanks, god bless them all

A chilling solemn breeze sweeps thru the town,
Down empty streets where children used to play;
The crumbled buildings, many falling down,
A monument to history's darkest day.
The rusted hulks of burned out motor cars,
Discarded bicycles against a wall,
The roads that carry disused tram-line scars,
The poignant remnants of the old church hall.
No more, the children laughing in the street;
No more, the parents in their Sunday best;
No more, the echoes of jack booted feet;
Forever shall ye martyrs lay in rest.
        The town will always stand as testament,
        To sons and daughters France will e'er lament.